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labelma · 3 years

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all the pain of yesterday

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When the call comes, it’s a surprise.

Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is.

“Hello, is this Fiona Gallagher?”

Somehow, Fiona just knows. She doesn’t know how or why, but...

“Yes this is her.”

The woman’s voice is soft, but clear, there’s quiet murmur in the background, it reminds Fiona of every time she got a call from the police station, the hospital, the school. For a moment, she feels like she’s 21 again, scared, alone, at her wit’s end, trying to hold everything together, scraping by with the skin of her teeth, always one wrong step from a catastrophe.

There is a split second of silence where Fiona knows this is it. Whatever the woman has to say- there’s no going back from it, as soon as the silence breaks. And it does.

“This is Brenda at Kindred Hospital South, your father Frank Gallagher was brought in experiencing hypoxia, disorientation and a high fever,”

This is it

“We regret to inform you that we did-“

This is how it happens

“Everything we could-“

Fiona’s blood runs cold,

“But your father passed away this evening at 8:46 from complications due to Covid-19.”

She knew it was coming. They all did. Frank had been dancing with death for years, how he had even managed to hold on for so long was beyond her.

It seemed that Frank’s luck had finally run dry.

“Would you like to make arrangements? If not we would be happy to help…”

Fiona isn’t listening. She tells the nurse to do whatever they need to do before hanging up.

She surprises herself when she feels tears prick the corners of her eyes, and she clenches her jaw. They won’t fall. She won’t cry over Frank. Not anymore. Not ever.

She takes a moment for herself, a moment to breath, a moment to consider the fact that she’s now lost both her parents, even if she lost them both years ago to drugs, to the bottle, to insanity.

She takes the briefest moment to grieve what could have been before stopping herself.

What’s done is done.

Her parents made their decisions, and she made hers.

Fiona thinks that at least now Frank and Monica will get to make each other miserable for eternity while they’re burning in the deepest pits of hell.

Or was it freezing?

Fiona never paid much attention in church anyway, on those rare occasions they went, usually to sneak bills from the collections plate.

Phone in her hand, screen still on from the phone call, Fiona realizes she doesn’t know what the next steps are.

Her instinct is to hop on the L, deal with the situation as it comes, never planning, never even able to plan because of the speed at which things fell apart. Her instinct is to go grab Frank from whatever shithole situation he got himself in, and slap some sense into him.

But obviously, Fiona couldn’t hop on the L, she was standing in the middle of the street in Chula Vista, California. Gone were the days of running into burning buildings with no forethought. Fiona had her life together. She had a serious job. She wasn’t busy juggling teens and pre-teens anymore.

And of course, there was no Frank to slap sense into anymore.

An odd pang twisted Fiona’s stomach at the thought.

She’s brought back to the presence when someone stumbles into her from behind,

“Perdóneme,”

The woman doesn’t look much older than she is, and she’s busy pushing a stroller with one hand, pulling a toddler along with the other.

Fiona sighs.

It’s time to face the music.

She calls her kids.

<hr>

Arrangements are made. Fiona honestly has very little say in them.

Frank wanted to be cremated, his family didn’t give nearly a big enough shit to make it fancy.

He had no possessions of value, nothing to give to his kids other than stained furniture, empty bottles, and trauma.

Really, Fiona is coming back for Liam.

Fiona was the guinea pig. The oldest daughter, the one who had no one except a wino father and batshit crazy mother to look after her.

Lip and Ian, born so close together, both so resilient, but still so so young when they first learned the hard way of Frank’s negligence.

Debbie and Carl, young enough to remember the times before Fiona dropped out of high school and made being a mother to her siblings a full time job. Old enough to remember all the times Frank stole their money, ruined their creations, hurt their very fragile childish feelings.

But Liam?

Liam never lived in a world where he had to be raised by Frank of Monica Gallagher.

And Fiona knows that she wasn’t the best guardian either. She knows that she abandoned him, even though she was the only mother he’d ever known. She knows that she’s done worse things.

But even when she fucked up, Lip was there to pick it up. And Ian behind him. And now Debbie and Carl are adults too. Liam would be just fine without her in the long run.

But still. Liam had the good fortune to be born last, young enough to be raised by his siblings, to never feel the sting of abuse and neglect the way the oldest five always had.

And Frank had always loved Liam, loved him so much. Liam was so kind, maybe even too kind. He loved Frank back, even though they all knew Frank was not deserving of such care from his youngest son.

So Fiona knew, knew it like she knew herself, that Liam, of all the Gallaghers, was going to be the most devastated.

And well, she missed her other kids too.

She hadn’t seen Franny far too long, hadn’t even met Fred. She missed Ian’s wedding, Carl’s graduation from the academy.

She’d stayed up to date of course, speaking with her siblings on the phone, FaceTiming to see her nieces and nephews, but she knew what it was like in Chicago. If you weren’t there you may as well not exist.

Fiona liked it that way.

When her plane had arrived at the San Diego International Airport all those years ago, she almost had a panic attack, nearly booked the next flight back to Chicago.

It had gotten easier with time.

For her entire life she’d been so tied to the little house on Wallace, she didn’t know who she was without it.

It was time to find out.

And she did.

She did find out, she found out what she was capable of, she found out how successful she could be, she found out who she was without living her life for her siblings.

Not that she would ever hold it against them but… She did what she could. It was time for her to live her own life now.

And for those very reasons, she was terrified of going back to Chicago.

She was terrified that all the progress, everything she built, all that she’d become, was nothing more than smoke and mist, ready to blow away the minute she arrived in the Windy City.

Which is why she never visited when Fred was born, or considered flying in to meet him.

Which is why when she received the surprisingly tasteful wedding invitation to Ian and Mickey Milkovich’s wedding, she regretfully declined.

She was so scared.

So scared she would go back and never be able to leave again.

But some of the fear had worn off over the months.

Her new life felt less like smoke, and more like a healthy young tree, still growing, but strong enough to weather a storm.

It was time to return.

<hr>

The plane ride feels oddly unceremonious for how anxious Fiona feels.

She watches as the Southern California coast line disappears from sight as the plane flies eastward, and wonders how she’ll be received when she arrives.

She doesn’t tell the kids she’s coming for a visit, worried they’ll make a big deal out of it, or worse, do nothing at all.

Chicago is exactly like she remembers it, and yet nothing like it used to be. Still dirty, windy, freezing, especially after her years spent in the San Diegan sun, but dotted with new boutiques, nicer buildings, fences that don’t look like they’re about to crumble into a pile of dust.

She has to fight to control her breathing in the Uber back to the old Gallagher house.

The sight of the sun setting over the familiar buildings of the South Side makes her feel something unidentifiable.

The house looks much the same as always, if not just a bit nicer due to Lip’s efforts to fix it up.

She hesitates for just a moment at the front door before turning the handle and walking in, refusing to give in to her doubts.

The TV is on, as usual. Debbie sits texting on the couch while Franny, much bigger than the last time Fiona saw her lounges on the couch engrossed in the colorful TV show, Carl next to her, also engrossed in the show.

She hears banging in the kitchen, and she walks towards it to find Lip hammering at the shelving unit, Tami preoccupied with hushing Fred, while Ian and Mickey sit at the kitchen table passing a beer back and forth, talking quietly.

Fiona is only a little surprised that she hasn’t been noticed yet. She’s quieter than she used to be, and each one of her siblings seems to be in their own little worlds.

It’s Liam who sees her first as he walks down the stairs, eyes red, looking tired, though his face lights up as soon as his eyes fall on her.

“Fiona!”

He runs into her arms, and the tears Fiona has been managing to hold back for days finally fall. She holds her youngest brother, and breathes in the familiar smell of his hair.

Liam’s shout alerts the rest of the family to her presence, and for a few minutes Fiona is wrapped in hug after hug, feeling laughter bubbling up in her chest.

It strikes her that even after so long away, she can still read her siblings like a book.

Lip is tense, she can feel it in the way he hugs her, in the hard set of his features, though Tami seems happy enough.

Carl and Debbie are both distracted, though the days where she could tell what kind of things they’d be distracted by are long gone.

Ian looks lighter, happier than she’s ever seen him, and for the smallest moment, she worries that Frank’s death may have thrown him into a manic episode before she notices the way Mickey has his hand firmly planted on his shoulder, and though Fiona was never quite able to trust him in the past, she thinks she does now.

She holds Franny against her hip, marveling at how heavy she is, while Liam entwines his fingers with hers.

Fiona gets the sense that she’s missed so much, and yet nothing at all, everyone falling into their familiar roles.

They settle in with coffee to catch up, Fiona hanging on every word, desperate to soak up everything she’s missed.

Lip decided not to sell the house in the end, figuring that the value in owning property was worth more than a quick payout which would disappear quicker that you’d think.

With Ian and Mickey in a new apartment and Frank… gone, the house was quieter, less crowded, a better place to raise two kids, at least until Lip and Tami could afford to move out.

Debbie had sworn off dating, saying she was sick of dating psycho chicks. Fiona laughs along with her and agrees, dating hasn’t been so kind to her either, but she suspects that Debbie will change her tune when the next person willing to go down on her comes along. She shares that same trait with Debbie, something she’s been trying to work on as she gets older and realizes how fucked up her habits and coping mechanisms are.

Liam is grieving, and Fiona’s heart aches for him. She cups her hands around his sallow cheeks and as she kisses his face and celebrates when he brushes her off, an embarrassed smile turning up his lips. She knows this is hard on him, Liam being the only Gallagher who truly still cared for Frank in more than just an offhand obligatory way. But she also knows that the hurt will wear off eventually as grief tends to do. Liam is young still, with so so much potential and such a bright future ahead of him. She’s not worried, even if she feels bad for leaving him.

She tells Liam that before she leaves she’s going to help get him into a good private school.

He deserves the opportunities none of his older siblings ever had.

Carl is still Carl, even if he’s trying to be a fine upstanding citizen. Still, she’s so proud he really seems to have made something of himself, even landing a stable union job.

Ian is happy, so happy, and Fiona lets his infectious joy wash over her. There was a time when Fiona worried for him. Worried he was doomed like Monica. She knew that stats, knew how hard it was for people with bipolar disorder to manage stable relationships, knew the Gallagher history was full of divorces and scorned exes, many of them hers, even without the added bonus of mental illness. When Ian was arrested and sentenced to three to five years in prison, she thought that was the end of any hope he had for a happy ending.

She’s glad she was wrong.

She can’t say she’s surprised by the reappearance of Mickey Milkovich in their lives, Mexico and prison be damned. Fiona doubted many things about Mickey, doubted his trustworthiness, doubted his intentions, doubted his stability, and all for good reason in her opinion. But one thing she never doubted was his love for her brother. Well, maybe there were times she doubted it a little, but she’s a cynical person.

She thinks that Ian and Mickey have the best relationship of any of the Gallaghers, a reality she would have laughed at 5 years ago, but it’s true.

She hopes that one day she can replicate their success, but she isn’t counting on it.

Right now she’s just working on learning to accept herself, and all her flaws.

It’s a process, but she’s getting there.

<hr>

Ultimately they decide not to hold a real funeral for Frank, not caring enough to plan one, and thinking Frank probably wouldn’t even want one.

Instead they congregate in the alley, joined by Kev and V as well as Tommy and Kermit, behind The Alibi to dump his ashes.

They aren’t so ceremonial, though Liam, with tears on his face does insist on saying a few words.

The whole ordeal takes no more than ten minutes, and when it’s over, Fiona feels like she can finally breathe.

Her entire life she was burdened with being her father’s daughter, living under his metaphorical shadow, even when she moved as far away as she could.

He haunted her every time she had a beer, every time she felt guilt creep in for leaving, every time she felt close to snapping at her new job.

But now Fiona thinks she can finally let it go, let Frank go, along with all her demons.

The flight back to feels shorter, or maybe Fiona just feels lighter. Somewhere along the way she stopped seeing Chicago as home, and finds herself eager for San Diego with its sun, beaches, and mountains. Her new home is her little apartment in Chula Vista, so close to Mexico she can cross the border whenever she wants, with her new friends, a new job, and a tan for the first time in her life.

She isn’t worried about her siblings. Lip is building a life for his new family, Ian is happily married to the love of his life, Debbie is learning and growing, trying to be a good mom to her daughter, Carl has a stable job he loves despite all odds, and Liam is the smartest and most resourceful of all of them.

They’re going to be just fine.

And so will she.

#shameless #Fiona Gallagher #gallavich #Ian Gallagher #mickey milkovich #my fic

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